Mexico City's chief of police was shot and two of his bodyguards killed in a dramatic assassination attempt early on Friday that he quickly blamed on one of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Axar.az reports citing foreign media that the city's public security chief Omar Garcia Harfuch suffered three bullet wounds as he and bodyguards came under heavy fire around dawn in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood, where the attack was captured on security cameras.

Some three hours later, apparently from his hospital bed, Garcia sent out a message on Twitter blaming his injuries and the death of two bodyguards on a "cowardly attack" by the CJNG, a gang notorious as one of the most violent in Mexico.